Opinion: US President Trump walking fine line following the Khashoggi disappearance
US-SAUDI ARABIA relations are under greater pressure than ever before following the suspected murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, writes Dennis Atkins.
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THE democratic world is united in its outrage about the disappearance and certain murder of Saudi Arabian writer Jamal Khashoggi.
After going into the Saudi consulate in Ankara, Turkey, to get papers for his approaching wedding, Khashoggi didn’t come out.
An American resident and columnist for The Washington Post, Khashoggi has been a trenchant critic of the House of Saud for years (although he was once close to the royals late last century).
Since then he’s been a champion of free speech and democratic reforms in the Middle East’s richest kingdom.
Khashoggi has been especially mocking of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who has been pushing economic reforms and limited social change (he’s sanctioned permission for women to drive!).
This ambitious royal, known in the White House and throughout Middle Eastern and other power centres as MBS, has Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner on speed dial and has been central to even deeper ties between Saudi Arabia and the US under the Trump presidency.
Now the whole US-Saudi relationship – going back to the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and King Abdul Aziz prior to World War II when American oil companies got in on the ground to help develop the vast crude resources beneath the desert – could be in jeopardy.
Relations have been worth hundreds of billions of dollars ever since and are now under greater pressure than ever.
According to Turkish law enforcement and intelligence sources, Khashoggi was tortured, killed and dismembered in the consulate.
The Turks say the line of responsibility for killing Khashoggi can be traced directly to MBS.
The Crown Prince has denied any involvement in anything that might have happened to Khashoggi or any knowledge of his whereabouts.
While the world waits for hard evidence – there are suggestions from Turkey there is some kind of recording of what happened to Khashoggi inside the consulate – there is a propaganda war going on.
Critics of the Saudis and their treatment of dissident voices are prepared to believe the worst and are using Khashoggi’s apparent fate to ramp up the campaign against the ruling family in Riyadh.
Khashoggi’s usual employer, The Washington Post, published their columnist’s last piece, received the day after he disappeared, under the headline “What the Arab world needs most is free expression”.
“The Arab world was ripe with hope during the spring of 2011,” wrote Khashoggi.
“Journalists, academics and the general population were brimming with expectations of a bright and free Arab society within their respective countries.
“They expected to be emancipated from the hegemony of their governments and the consistent interventions and censorship of information.
“These expectations were quickly shattered; these societies either fell back to the old status quo or faced even harsher conditions than before.”
As Khashoggi’s final call for freedom was ringing out, the impact any Saudi involvement in the murder might have on the deep two-way financial and commercial links between Riyadh and Washington was beginning to play out.
The US has been the Saudis’ greatest military and diplomatic backer for decades and nothing has gotten in its way so far.
Washington has shut the collective official eyes to the brutal repression of the House of Saud towards its people and kept its counsel when other nations have criticised the refusal to give citizens civil and religious rights – particularly women.
One narrowly avoided flash point came after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
Although carried out by al-Qa’ida, 15 of the 19 terrorists in the planes were Saudi citizens. Notably, a Saudi government jet left Washington airport immediately after the attacks despite other airlines being subject to a “no exemptions” grounding.
The families of many of the victims have sought to sue the US Government and get documents relating to Saudi involvement released – all with no success.
Following the Khashoggi disappearance, Trump is walking a fine line – or trying to appear to – so he can look like he’s standing up to apparent murderers but not endangering America’s biggest arms deals.
Saudi Arabia accounts for 10 per cent of all US arms exports, contracts representing thousands of jobs in states vital to the chances of Trump’s Republicans in the midterm elections in 2½ weeks.
In this climate it’s hardly surprising the Saudis and their hard line Republican supporters are kicking back.
Trump’s son, Donald Jr, sent out a tweet this week accusing Khashoggi of “tooling around Afghanistan with Osama bin Laden and al-Qa’ida co-founder Abdullah Azzam”.
This relates to a time when Khashoggi met bin Laden in the 1980s and 1990s although the columnist says he did so as a journalist only.
Another tweet said Khashoggi was “just a democrat reformer journalist holding a RPG with jihadists”.
It’s a nasty turn just weeks after Khashoggi’s apparent brutal murder.
Given the reputation of the Saudis on imprisoning and killing dissidents, we shouldn’t be surprised.
dennis.atkins@news.com.au
Dennis Atkins is The Courier-Mail’s national affairs editor
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